1. I have now written over half of my thesis – so I’m in the last year(ish) of write up. Shout out to all the other part-time students who had to deal with all the ‘so when will you actually be finished?’ questions over the Christmas break.

2. The Mixed Bill symposium went really well (image from the industry panel at the end of the day above). We even got a review (written by our keynote speaker) in the Journal of Comedy Studies – here! Kate, Lisa and I are now in the process of trying to pull together 2018’s event. More information, dates and the call for papers coming soon to all angry feminists/comedy scholars/ awesome humans.

3. I’m in the final stages of getting my second article published. Positives and negatives: Reclaiming the female body and self-deprecation in stand-up comedy. Soon it will exist (probably end of Feb 2018)! And when it does it will exist here (forever apparently).

4. I decided at the start of this year I would also set sail on the journey of the PGCLTHE (the PGCE specifically for learning and teaching in higher education – natch). I love teaching and have done it for a long time now in various guises – children, adults, teacher training and most recently HE students – so it felt like a good time. I managed to get some of my existing experience validated too (the Recognition of Prior Learning route- whoop) so I have started mid-way through. The sessions have been really useful and it has been great to meet and talk with some of my colleagues – life as an Associate Lecturer often involves sprinting past people in corridors and 5min chats at a photocopier (it also involves being mistaken for an undergraduate student on a fairly regular basis too – most recently in a public setting by someone who actually interviewed me for one of my jobs, which I have now had for 3 years – much to the amusement of my students who were present).

5. Oh and we got CATS!! In August my team adopted Frida and Valerie (after Kahlo and Solanas respectively, obvs). They are the best.

Last night I went along to the launch of the BBC Comedy Caroline Aherne Bursary, a new initiative promising to award £5k and a development opportunity to a ‘Funny Northern Woman’ in memory of the legendary comic. The bursary was launched at the BBC’s offices in MediaCity Salford and was preceded by a ‘Women in Comedy panel’ where several women from across the industry discussed their careers in comedy and tips for new entrants.

Having been researching the UK comedy industry since 2013 I was particularly interested to see how this new initiative was presented to an audience (made up of the ticketed public as part of the Salford Sitcom Showcase events). I should note that none of my criticisms are directed at the panel members themselves, all of whom were talented women with a lot of experience to offer. However, several stark issues were brought home for me both during the panel discussion and the subsequent hasty ‘launch’ of the bursary.

An all white panel. In 2017 this is not acceptable. It is especially relevant to consider when the issue under discussion is about diversifying comedy with ‘new voices’. A panel of 5 cis-gendered white women (and confusingly, considering the subject matter, only one northern voice) does not send out a message of inclusion, it simply perpetuates a situation of privilege. This was compounded by the fact that when all the panel members were asked about their comedy heroes all comics referenced were also white (as were the performers featured on video clips played at the event). What I found astonishing was knowing that the Women in Comedy Festival, an organisation without any core funding which is staffed by volunteers (whom I have been working alongside since 2014), regularly consider this issue and adapts to find ways to be more inclusive across all aspects of diversity. I have witnessed and been involved in these honest and difficult conversations about our responsibility to be inclusive (something the festival’s director Hazel O’Keefe is incredibly passionate about) and for a huge organisation like the BBC to not have considered this is frankly unbelievable. You cannot just replace white men with white women – that is not inclusive and it is certainly not any kind of feminism I recognise. (More a post-feminist denial of the need to collectively challenge structures that continue to exclude and marginalise?)

Complexity of language. The first comment made by the host was that often the panel members (herself included) get invited along to ‘women in’ panels and that often they make the point that they are just ‘people in’ a particular field. This was confusing as the chair was from the BBC, who I’d imagine had control of the name of the event…. so maybe simply give the panel another name rather than starting off on this awkward note? The first question after this statement was ‘which women inspired you to go into comedy?’ – if gender really is irrelevant (I’m not saying it is, but this seemed the position of the chair) then why kick off with a gendered question? This was further complicated by the chair using the term ‘ladies and gentlemen’ and a panel member’s repeated use of the word ‘comedienne’. You cannot make a statement erasing the need to discuss the ways in which systems ‘other’ people (along gendered, racial, classist or ability lines) whilst simultaneously using language that reinforces and maintains difference.

Will this change anything? The timing of this event, in the week after high profile revelations about the BBC’s pay gap across racial, gender and class lines, meant that structural considerations were fresh in my mind when listening to the speakers. Although, of course we must bear in mind that these inequalities exist across all broadcast organisations, and not just those required to publish the data publicly. A question I was left with after the panel was ‘How does this initiative fit with the BBC’s overall strategy to be more inclusive in its comedy output?’. As with the 2014 ‘no more all-male panel shows’ announcement it felt very much like this initiative needed to be connected up to a wider strategy about what happens behind the cameras too. Don’t get me wrong, it is great that a new Northern female voice will be given an opportunity to be heard, but at the same time we have to ask ourselves will this person just be dragged into a faulty system? A system that continues to discriminate along gendered and racial lines? Will this bursary be used to tick a box without making any real tangible change that will impact many more women than just the winner? The bursary was hastily mentioned at the end of the panel with the key advice seeming to be ‘look on the website for how to apply’ and there was no opportunity to publicly ask questions after the bursary was announced.

I didn’t feel as if I could articulate a (non-confrontational) question during the Q&A (which consisted of three comments disguised as questions about pitching to/ approaching commissioners….which is kind of understandable in a way considering the event was supposed to be about launching the bursary). These are just my initial thoughts and I think and feel many other things about this event too – I will find a way to articulate the complexity of this experience and the initiative within my research. My concern is that small one-off initiatives and awards from large organisations are used to distract from much more complex and challenging structural issues which need addressing.

Earlier this year, around a kitchen table, two other amazing women and myself established Mixed Bill, a comedy and gender research network. Sara Ahmed in Living a Feminist Life (2017) writes evocatively on the significance of tables for feminist work (gaining a place at the table, turning tables, family disagreements at the dinner table) and her work continues to inspire me to create my own opportunities to progress the feminist agenda of my work. In this instance with a (to use Ahmed’s term) ‘fragile’ feminist network external to any one institution.

I had been thinking about producing an engagement event in relation to my research for a while and couldn’t think of two better partners in crime than Lisa Moore of the University of Salford and Kate Fox, stand-up poet and PhD candidate at Leeds University. Together we are a pretty formidable team and our research areas and interests fit very nicely alongside each other. The event we have been planning is shaping up to be the mother of all symposia. It has been quite tricky to plan due to the quality and range of abstracts we received – we had to make some ruthless decisions as every single abstract outlined a paper that we would have loved to have seen.

Last week we sat down and thrashed it out and have programmed an event that feels in many ways quite revolutionary. We aren’t running concurrent papers so everyone’s voice can be heard by all attendees. There is nothing more frustrating than having to pick between attending one presentation when another, just as relevant, is taking place down the hall – although maybe being the presenter of a paper to a split audience is a contender for the crown? The opportunity for those researching gender and comedy, a growing field, to engage and be challenged by so many different approaches that speak directly to their area is exciting too – as often gender and comedy is ring-fenced in a panel of its own within larger discussions of comedy (those researching gender and comedy often find themselves thrown together irrespective of the way their paper may be a better fit with, say, panels on political satire or musical comedy). As the fundamental premise of our event is women and comedy and the opportunities women have to represent themselves through comedy, the programmed panels give a chance to address this from multiple perspectives, with multiple examples from different countries, eras and approaches.

Our event will also include several non-traditional presentations/ performances and interventions into the area to give attendees the chance to engage with (and learn from) the ideas and opinions of those who work within comedy and performance. We are pushing very hard to ensure our event is inclusive to all and are discussing various approaches we can take to try to impact on the diversity of our field. We all feel strongly that we have to go beyond just saying we want to be diverse in our programming and attendance make-up to find active and practical ways of addressing this.

It is very exciting to be setting off on this new adventure with Mixed Bill, as producing events and inspiring engagement as part of a team is where I think I work best. Between us we have lots of ideas about where to explore next and I also can’t wait to meet all the amazing people who will be joining us at the start of this exciting new phase for gender and comedy research in October.

I get to use the best of all phrases in my PhD thesis now… the textbook ‘as I have argued elsewhere’. Exciting times.

The article evolved from a conference presentation I gave way back in 2014 at the University of Hull and centres around the argument that 2013, although notable for its many high profile successes for female comics, was not the ‘FINALLY THE WOMEN HAVE ARRIVED’ all-out party the media seemed to think it was. In terms of the party metaphor, it wasn’t really even time to open the buffet. In fact just as with every advancement for women into areas of labour outside the home, there was a swift inverse reaction, this time played out through reactionary and sexist humour.

I’m in the process of finishing the draft of my follow up article which will explore uses of self-deprecation in stand-up comedy. I was in total lock down over the Xmas period finishing the thesis chapter upon which this article will be based and am now counting the seconds until the end of term so I can get a day off.

Oh yeah and I have also recently co-founded a research network (Mixed Bill) – more on that here.

In other news…..

A random recent moment was the sudden posting of this image to social media by a fellow student of my high school (a school that has subsequently had both a name change and a complete facelift… as if in a kind of witness protection programme for buildings). The classic Sixth Form leaving book activity of ‘Person most likely’ – decorated with some pretty flipping snazzy clip art.

I had a vague memory of this… but there it was again in black and white. Five words that drive at the very heart of everything that, as an adult, regularly and completely does my head in.

FEMALE. VERSION. OF. PAUL. MERTON

This was the early 2000s (equality was achieved by then right, guys – *eye roll*) and 18 year old me didn’t really think twice about this – fast forward 3 years and this would have not stood for a second. At university I learnt that I’m not the female version of anything, thanks very much. I’m not some kind of rubbish tribute act to a guy who’s funny on TV.

I’ll be tackling this kind of subtle reinforcing of gendered expectation in the introduction to my research – as this really gets to the crux of why I am interested my area. The enduring need for society to define people in binary and to give women power or station only in its relation to their male counterparts. This renegotiation of gendered expectations constantly plays out through humour… another thing for the introduction to the thesis then.

Oh and my bestie Amy is kick-ass CBT therapist, not an interior designer – so take that The Man!

2016 upon reflection…

Feb/ Mar/ Apr: A blur of endless teaching and commuting to and from Sheffield. 2 sets of board pens ruined. It was cold and rainy. That’s all I have in terms of memories of this period.

May: The markathon. Also briefly left the house to see Penny Arcade’sLoving Lasts Longer at Contact Theatre.

June: Having completed marking I headed off to Barcelona for the Primavera Sound Music Festival (my 3rd visit). Greatly enjoyed the line-up which included LCD Soundsystem (who were off the chart amazing – I never thought I’d have the chance to see them live) Tame Impala, Wild Nothing, Suede, AR Kane, Daughter, Air, Savages, Radiohead, Beirut, Brian Wilson doing Pet Sounds, Orchestra Baobab, Bradford Cox… and so on….. Plus there was a really cool punk exhibition in the Modern Art museum in Barcelona too (which is where I took the photo of the smashed up room above).

July: Wrote my paper (Positives and Negatives: Reclaiming the Female Body and Self-Deprecation in Stand-up Comedy) for the Mock the Weak conference.

Sept: Presented my paper at Mock The Week Conference at University of Teesside and subsequently had the abstract of my paper accepted as part of a special issue of Comedy Studies Journal in 2018. Saw Amy Schumer perform live at the Manchester Apollo. Commenced mentoring my Arts Emergency student.

Oct: Moved house – will never be moving again. Watched a huge amount of comic talent as part of Women in Comedy Festival 2016! Started back at MMU working with the first year filmmakers on Contextualising Practice.

Nov: Tried to get our house into a house shape plus teaching, writing, writing, writing.

Dec: Xmased. Bunkered down for a few weeks to get a chapter of my thesis drafted.

2017 looking ahead…..

Resolutions:

1: Read more fiction by female writers – I read a huge amount of non-fiction by female academics and theorists but as an avid reader and stories I need to up my game. I have just finished Chris Kraus’ epistolary novel I Love Dick and stacked up on the bookshelf ready for deployment are a variety of novels to enjoy – including titles by Zadie Smith, Maggie Nelson, Harper Lee, Sarah Waters and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (who was responsible for one of the most admirable television moments of 2016 when she reminded the terrifyingly short-sighted, Trump supporting editor of the U.S Spectator that as a white man he doesn’t get to decide who can feel discriminated against by racism (See here). How she remained composed when faced with such unbelievable ignorance was frankly astounding.

2: Accept that I can’t do everything – 2016 was a tough cookie and probably the limit for me in terms of commitments I can undertake whilst studying and trying to remain a functioning human being. There was a lot of turning down social engagements/ invites and then feeling guilty about having to do so. Moving house was also an exhausting and time-consuming activity and so 2017 will be about refocusing on what matters and accepting that I can’t be all things to all people. Get the research written, write the journal articles that have been accepted, teach to the best of my ability and be nicer to myself.

3: Try and do practical things that impact positively on others. Last year was basically a series of mornings that I woke up and cried about the direction humanity is heading in. I reject the inward looking rhetoric of placing certain nationalities/ classes/ economic groups/ ethnicities/ religions above others (anything that ends with the term ‘first’ needs to seriously consider the message it is sending). I will not let this stop me being positive but nor will I shut up and let thing just happen unchallenged either. The resources I have are small (and in many cases irrelevant – I research comedy) and I might not be able to do everything (see above) but I am hoping to find ways to make practical contributions myself and to facilitate others in making small contributions of time and skills to small organisations/ charities that need help too (by revolutionising the way one of the organisations I work for makes use of its volunteering policy).

4: March – www.womensmarchlondon.com Today there is an image in the press of two rich white men giving everyone the thumbs up having successfully stirred up hatred and division. In the background of this photo is a framed cover of a Playboy cover. This image says absolutely everything about how inequality is maintained and how systems continue to discriminate and ‘other’ those who do not come from privilege. NO MORE.

Back in September I had the chance to present a small (but significant) aspect of my research at the Mock The Weak conference at the University of Teesside. The conference organisers Sarah Illot and Helen Davies had brought together a variety of researchers, academics and industry professionals to discuss comedy and the politics of representation. It was a great opportunity for me to explore some of the themes I am engaging with in one of my chapters – the use of self-deprecation and, conversely, body positivity in stand-up comedy by female performers.

The paper I presented was called Positives and Negatives: Reclaiming the Female Body and Self-Deprecation in Stand-up Comedy (snappy title eh). Here’s a shot of my PowerPoint up and ready to go (with a cameo from Rosie White who chaired the panel).

The audience offered some great points for further consideration and asked some interesting questions. Many hadn’t seen the work of the comedian I used as my key example (Luisa Omielan) and so the decision to play a short clip of her work was definitely the right way to go.

One of the really useful things about the conference was that it kicked off with a workshop for early career researchers in publishing. Having just (I mean literally just – as in the day before going to the conference) finished making amendments to an article following on from peer review, it felt timely to reflect on the challenges this throws up for PhD researchers. It was exactly the kind of workshop you wish you had attended before you started your PhD. In the session we had the opportunity to hear about the experiences of Dr Rosie White, who was awarded her Doctorate in the late 90s, and early career researcher Megan Sormus, and talk through the process from submission to publication. All the PhD candidates in the room discussed the difficulty of getting our heads round the REF (Research Excellence Framework) and what, if anything, this meant in terms of the work we would hopefully go on to publish whilst studying. The ever-present pressure to spin all the different plates (getting the research written, gaining teaching experience, getting articles published) simultaneously was also explored. I definitely left the room feeling more aware of what I should be focusing on and some of the key things I need to consider the next time I submit work for publication (it seems very much like I lucked out – approaching a journal cold and their responding swiftly and positively). There’s a great summary of advice form the workshop here.

The conference included a broad range of topics and approaches (Rob Hawkes on Stewart Lee and trust, Kate Fox on Northernness and class in comedy, were just a few of the highlights) as well as illuminating keynotes from Anshuman Mondal and Sharon Lockyer.

The two days concluded with a panel discussion which gave a really eye-opening account of the complex issues involved in comedy and representation, and featured contributions from a range of perspectives, including comedian Kate Smurthwaite, Lynne Parker from Funny Women (both of whom I have interviewed as part of my research), trans activist and comedian Clare Parker, comedy writer and director Matthew Greenhough and Akua Gymafi founder of the British Black List, as well as the keynote speakers and conference organisers.

The conference blog is still active and includes interviews with several of the presenters for the event. Check it out here.

I’m not sure where to start with this one. It is something that I have seen a few times and always prickled at but I think I have finally worked out what my issue is and I am going to attempt to articulate it here…it is not really research related and it will 100% come across as a rant so this is your chance to get out now – you’ve been warned.

What the hell is this???!!??

Statements such as this are prolific Facebook memes and go, in my opinion, far beyond faulty logic and venture into the somewhat offensive woodland beyond. *I am willing to accept that this may be particularly frustrating for me due to the context in which I encounter these messages (mostly amongst Facebook and Google’s ham-fisted brainwashing attempts to get me to get my head down and conform, that involves changing all online adverts to ones for Clear Blue Pregnancy tests – subtle). I see these images as just another extension of cultural reinforcement of outdated notions of women’s roles. It’s a good day to air this frustration thanks to the ongoing issues the Tory leadership contest has thrown up.

The similarity between this and the ‘Facebook mothership challenge’ nonsense (more here) which has already been covered in detail, cannot be ignored. I’ve worked out my problem with this one specifically….

I take issue with the idea that giving your mother a grandchild is somehow a reflection of how good they are as a parent – err word up guys its not!

I’d counter the claim within the meme, by arguing that the best parents will love their children irrespective of their willingness (or ability) to procreate. Statements like the one contained in the meme not only shackles a woman’s decision to have kids to her own self-worth (which is a long standing issue – for our society to be a woman you simply must want children) but it also implies that it is a reflection on the parenting that a woman experienced herself. Again if we are getting into a debate about quality parenting I’m pretty sure making your daughter aware of her reproductive rights and ensuring she has the ability to make her own choices is pretty high up the list.

This link between an individual woman’s decision in relation to procreation and the idea that they must have had some terrible experience to make that decision is offensive and reinforced everywhere.

I feel like popping on a pair of sunglasses like the ones in John Carpenter’s 1988 film They Live and revealing the truth.

This meme screams YOU ARE LETTING YOUR MOTHERS DOWN BY NOT CHOOSING TO BECOME A MOTHER YOURSELF. and I. Don’t .Like .It.

It is part of what could be considered the ultimate guilt trip for women. I say women because there is not the same level of pressure placed upon males of a similar age and the male identity, under western capitalism, is not entwined with fatherhood in the same way. Those deviating from the path of motherhood are often considered by society to be oddballs doomed to be repeatedly told what good mothers they would have been(see Kate Fox’s work on otherhood)

I’ll never forget the look of sheer confusion and bafflement on a male colleague’s face (years ago) when, upon enquiring if I wanted children, I told him I wasn’t going to answer that question because I didn’t think it had any bearing on me as a person. I believe my first response (before having to qualify it due to his inability to understand) was ‘nope don’t answer that, not relevant, next question’. He just couldn’t compute that I might not want to talk about this topic with someone I didn’t know and worked with. Worked with is the key thing here – we know that there continues to be discrimination in the workplace against women of a certain age who may become a liability to a company by going off on mat leave (see this here from The Guardian in 2015). So why, even if I had the sudden urge to discuss my reproductive abilities with a virtual stranger, would I make myself more vulnerable to workplace discrimination?

Yes some women are mothers, some women aren’t can we just get on board with that concept now. And can we stop pitting women with kids against those without them like this awful patronising piece of rubbish (here) from Kate Spicer in 2013 who uses the term ‘motherhood deniers’ and says she thinks that every woman who says she is happy without children must be lying! Wow for a writer she has a very small imagination, I don’t find it hard at all to think that within the 51% of people in the U.K that identify as women that there might be some that are happy without children. Just think if we freed up all the time we spend competing against other women, or beating ourselves up for our perceived failings, what we could achieve in terms of parity with men.

Today’s news only compounds this issue – why in 2016 are we not questioning why it is still ok for journalists to ask women ‘do you feel like a mum in politics?’ – this is just as problematic as Andrea Leadsom’s reply! (Again Kate Fox’s blog today is an excellent read)

I have plenty of friends with kids and I respect their decision to start families and vitally they respect my decisions too. They don’t see my current childlessness as a comment on their life choices and nor should they. So can we all just take a moment to consider what messages things like these memes sends out to women and respect everyone’s decisions – whether they match our own or not.

I’ve been so busy but I have finally managed to find some time to draft a response to a comedy conference’s call for papers. I’ve decided that I’ll focus on self-deprecation, a topic I’m exploring as part of my research and something that really winds me up. (fingers crossed it gets accepted)

As a general rule I find it very difficult to listen to people being negative about themselves, not just in terms of comic performance but in my day to day interactions with people too. I think the amazing comedian Kristen Schaal sums this habit up best and funniest….

Hearing people talk negatively about themselves, be it because of their weight, their appearance or some perceived flaw they think they have, makes me feel that I should be apologising for that fault as well, as I too deviate from the current idealised version of a woman. I don’t like being made to feel like I’m being invited to collude in that negative thinking and I certainly don’t want to reinforce how you feel about yourself, firstly because I don’t think it’s a true reflection of your worth as a human being (we are all our own harshest critics), and secondly because I don’t like the way it makes me feel like I should be ashamed of aspects of myself either. I like myself just fine thanks very much.

Unfortunately self-deprecation in day to day life is a slippery thing to pin down. I do my absolute best not to put myself down or engage in negative chat about myself. However, women have historically used self-deprecation to appease those who struggle with the idea of women with power – power over their own bodies, power in the world of work or power over their own opinions. By lowering our own status in this way, we have been acquiescing to the needs of others (and others’ egos) and somehow softening the challenge to another’s sense of self. Why would we ever want to come across as less than our best selves? Unfortunately it’s so ingrained in our culture that we do it without thinking, as just a way we communicate about ourselves to others. This is obviously then reinforced and emphasised by the critique of women in the mainstream media and god-awful women’s magazines.

So having said all this I have noticed that it is a really really hard habit to break and is not at all straightforward. I’ll give an example – my new year’s resolution this year was to apologise less. Sounds odd right, but my constant need to apologise was getting out of hand. The number of emails I send that start with the sentence ‘sorry to bother you’ or ‘I know you must be busy but’ is OFF THE CHART.

I seem to fall into the ‘sorry’ trap in correspondence more so than in person and also when I am really busy and don’t have chance to check myself (I have sent at least 2 emails this week which I wish I could recall and delete the numerous apologies therein). I think in the real world I can hear myself about to say the words and pull myself back from the edge just in time. Plus in-person there’s more room for nuance and context than in stone cold black and white text. By apologising I’m not really self-deprecating in the same way, I’m not saying there is a flaw in me, but I am creating the idea that someone else’s time or feelings about something should take precedent over mine. Somehow I am in the wrong for asking for their help or requiring attention. I draw your attention to the interesting work of comedian, writer and director of the Bath Literature Festival Viv Groksop in an article she penned for the Guardian last year about women and the word sorry (here).

Last year I wrote the following in an email to my PhD supervisors. I sent them through my RF2 report (a major/ stressful part of the process of submitting my work) to get their feedback in advance of the assessment. When one mentioned she was printing it out, as not to read it from the screen, I responded with a textbook

“Yeah it is a bit of an epic, sorry”

ARRRGGHHHH. This was in regard to a piece of work I had worked my absolute hardest on – seriously why would I do that?

Luckily for me another one of my supervisors immediately shot back with

‘never apologise for hard work’

They called me out on it and rightly so. When I am finished there are going to be plenty of people that’ll want to tear that work down (haters gonna hate) and I should be proud of the good work I do – not apologise to people for having to read it. Be self-critical sure, reflect on what it is you are doing, but self-deprecation is not helpful to anyone. I am going to do my absolute best to not only stop ‘sorry-ing’ all over the shop but also to check others too. I have so far achieved this once this week when one of my students started an email with ‘Sorry it’s probably a dumb question’ to which I responded ‘Don’t apologise and don’t feel bad for asking questions – it’s how we all learn stuff’.

I hate shopping. People who know me well are aware of the lengths I will go in order to avoid it, especially clothes shopping. When pressed and I have no other options (there is only so many times you can sew something up aparently), I conduct myself with assassin-like efficiency – in and out in seconds with minimal bloodshed.

The cold strip lighting and oppressive body fascism of the high street is not my comfort zone, but having made as many xmas presents as I have time for (and can get away with using my solid B- craft skills) there are certain things that will require action.

My 14 year old sister’s present is yet to click into place and as a result on my way home I made the spur of the moment decision to walk through H&M. Whereupon I stumbled upon this jumper….

I’m sorry what? Surely this should read ‘Feminism – a word now routinely used to sell things to women’. Thanks for reducing the radical fight for the emancipation of everyone from gender binary patriarchal control to a slogan on a jumper, that’s super helpful.

I’ve never read anything as accessible as Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman (2009) on why this kind of thing is problematic, (specifically the chapter Feminism(TM): Two Sides of the Same Con). Powermakes the point that ‘stripped of any internationalist and political quality, feminism becomes about as radical as a diamanté phone cover.’ (Power, 2009: 30).

I’m not adverse to putting the word feminism on things, go ahead, but (unfortunately) we can’t all be Kathleen Hanna. Watch The Punk Singer(2013) if you haven’t already – that woman is a genius.

So all my trip to H&M achieved was me contemplating the complexities of using both the word, and ideology, of feminism to get people to buy into a system that ultimately oppresses them. Selling/buying a T-shirt is the easy part, getting people to understand and identify as feminist AND live their feminism, that’s the harder sell.

This week I came across this advertisement on Twitter and I honestly thought it was a hoax. Having heard Jessica Milner-Davies discuss the difference between practical jokes and hoaxes at the 2014 International Humour Summer School, I was utterly convinced that someone would do the ‘big reveal’ at some point as it was such a textbook example.

I thought there was no way that this incredibly offensive caption could be real; someone’s photoshopped it in. This was one just of those traps that people set to enrage feminists online in order to laugh at their ire and then berate them for being so stupid to fall for it…..however this was not a drill.

This advert exists in print in the 2015 catalogue for American department store Bloomingdales. ‘SPIKE YOUR BEST FRIEND’S EGGNOG WHEN THEY’RE NOT LOOKING.’

This story has subsequently been heavily covered in the media (see here for the Guardian’s recap) with may questioning how the hell this ever got signed off. How did an advert for ‘holiday season’ clothing enter such dark territory and how is it possible in 2015 that someone didn’t spot that this caption was a problem?? In my own opinion it looks like it should have some kind of warning message underneath it (‘This festive season remember to watch your drinks everybody’ or ‘ 90% of rapes are committed by people previously known to the victim’ etc.), so stark is the connotation of date rape.

Once I had gotten over my initial shock that this image existed in the world, what I found particularly interesting was that the key thing about this advert that tipped it from a completely average shot of fashion models to highly offensive pro-date rape image was the text.

Surely if you are going to do a fashion shoot inspired by, or even remotely visually similar to, the highly controversial music video for Robin Thicke and Pharrell William’s Blurred Lines (as this is in its choices of colours, black, cream, white, red lipstick… see the image below), then you think long and hard about the caption you add to ensure the image is not read as a continuation of the problematic consent-related discourse of the song itself. The song and video were heavily criticised in the media (see here) and so it is no surprise that this advert has attracted similar levels of critique along the same lines.

Robin Thicke’s video for Blurred Lines (2013)

We are invited by this advert, irrespective of the text, to position ourselves as the man, as we are in the overwhelming majority of images, film, media etc. See, as always, Laura Mulvey’sVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) for her seminal articulation of this idea. His gaze is the one we follow and the woman, head thrown back and smiling is the subject of his (and therefore our) stare. This means that whatever caption was written in this space was more likely to be attributed to the male rather than the female model as he is the active protagonist of this scene. Again the fact that none of the designers or copy editors picked up on this is astonishing.

Today is conveniently International Men’s Day and, sidestepping the obvious discussion about why this day exists in the first place (See comedian Richard Herring’s work on this here), I think this advert provides an example of how patriarchy limits both men and women in its perpetuation of patriarchal gender roles. This advert invites us to think that this man is about to, or maybe already has, spiked a woman’s drink. It normalises the idea that this is just something that men do, for a laugh. It reinforces the idea that men only think about sex and will stop at nothing to get it irrespective of the consent of their partner as so beautifully articulated in Blurred Lines‘ chorus ‘I know you want it’. Does knowing I want it mean you don’t have to ask me? This is patronising, constraining and offensive to men as much as it is women.

So how does this link to your work on humour and comedy studies then? Good question. Well, I’m particularly interested in this as my research sits within the wider realm of cultural studies. I’ll be looking at how Angela McRobbie’s work on the complexification of anti-feminist backlash often takes the form of irony in advertising, which is also explored in the work of Rosalind Gill (I’ll be looking at this in terms of the U.K comedy industry and advertising for comedy). An interview where McRobbie briefly talks about her work can be found here.

The Bloomingdales advert uses a tone that makes the suggestion of spiking someone’s drink seem a cheeky joke, in a ‘wink wink nudge nudge’ kind of way. The advert knows that what it is saying is not acceptable, invoking feminist scorn, but then diffuses the problematic content of the statement by falling back on the ‘this is a joke’ ironic tone. I’m sure they didn’t anticipate this level of backlash but they knew this statement was tongue in cheek at the very least. The issue here for me is that women’s everyday experiences and the jokey suggestion of this advert are not sufficiently different to be fertile territory for irony or humour.

I am also reminded of an excellent animation about sexual consent that uses humour to get the message across in a clear way. (click link below image).

I love this because I feel it demonstrates how comedy can be used to critique society and throw light on to issues by highlighting their faulty logic. There is something ridiculous about a stick figure pouring tea down someone’s throat, justifying it by saying ‘well you wanted tea last week’.

Most of the press around comedy and consent focuses on rape jokes but I think this provides just one example of how comedy can also be used to highlight inequalities and violence against marginalised groups too. Comedy is another weapon with which to smash patriarchal norms and this is a call to arms.